Alder Dragon
02-14-2008, 11:41 AM
I was looking around on Google, and found this:
http://www.snipehunt.net/devel/zelda/data/Maps/zelda-dungeons(map).gif
It shows that all of the dungeons (at least in the first quest) of LoZ fit together almost perfectly as a puzzle. I never thought about this - and although playing through the game around 20 times, I never noticed it. I know when making NES games, developers would often use space-saving tricks such as this, but never noticed how perfectly the dungeons such as the Eagle and Manji fit in there.
I know this was also done on LttP. If you've never heard of the mirror glitch, basically you jump off a ledge in a dungeon (on GBA), then use your magic mirror to teleport you back to the dungeon entrance. The game thinks you're on the bottom level, when you're actually on the top, and you can walk through walls and such. I actually made my way to the Triforce room before even getting the master sword.
The same works with Zelda 2, watching some tool-assisted speed runs, you can see how some people jump right through walls and end up in a totally different dungeon.
This is undoubtedly just a space-saver, But it is still very interesting.
Now that I look at it, the underworld is actually bigger than the overworld, almost twice as big. On the map I linked to, there are 16 squares down, and 16 squares right. The overworld map is 8 x 16. I suppose that means in LoZ, there are three 8x16 map grids in the game, two for dungeons, one for the overworld, and I'd be willing to bet that those grey areas on the map are used for shops, medicine, hidden rupees, etc. This is a total of 384 different screens in the entire game. Interesting.
http://www.snipehunt.net/devel/zelda/data/Maps/zelda-dungeons(map).gif
It shows that all of the dungeons (at least in the first quest) of LoZ fit together almost perfectly as a puzzle. I never thought about this - and although playing through the game around 20 times, I never noticed it. I know when making NES games, developers would often use space-saving tricks such as this, but never noticed how perfectly the dungeons such as the Eagle and Manji fit in there.
I know this was also done on LttP. If you've never heard of the mirror glitch, basically you jump off a ledge in a dungeon (on GBA), then use your magic mirror to teleport you back to the dungeon entrance. The game thinks you're on the bottom level, when you're actually on the top, and you can walk through walls and such. I actually made my way to the Triforce room before even getting the master sword.
The same works with Zelda 2, watching some tool-assisted speed runs, you can see how some people jump right through walls and end up in a totally different dungeon.
This is undoubtedly just a space-saver, But it is still very interesting.
Now that I look at it, the underworld is actually bigger than the overworld, almost twice as big. On the map I linked to, there are 16 squares down, and 16 squares right. The overworld map is 8 x 16. I suppose that means in LoZ, there are three 8x16 map grids in the game, two for dungeons, one for the overworld, and I'd be willing to bet that those grey areas on the map are used for shops, medicine, hidden rupees, etc. This is a total of 384 different screens in the entire game. Interesting.